ing at their own doors. Where do the cows abide? They are congregated in wondrous masses in the suburbs; and though in spring-time they go out to pasture in the fields which lie under the Hampstead and Highgate hills, or in the vales of Dulwich and Sydenham, and there crop the tender blade,

"When proud pied April, dress'd in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,"

yet for the rest of the year the coarse grass is carted to their stalls, or they devour what the breweries and distilleries cannot extract from the grain harvest. Long before "the unfolding star wakes up the shepherd" are the London cows milked; and the great wholesale venders of the commodity bear it in carts to every part of the town, and distribute it to hundreds of itinerants, who are waiting like the water-carriers at the old conduits. It is evident that a perishable commodity which every one requires at a given hour must be so distributed. The distribution has lost its romance. Misson, in his Travels' published at the beginning of the last century, tells us of the May-games of "the pretty young country girls that serve the town with milk." Alas! the May-games and pretty young country girls have both departed, and a milk-woman has become a very unpoetical personage. There are few indeed of milk-women who remain. So it is with most of the occupations that associate London with the country. The cry of "Water-cresses" used to be heard from some barefoot nymph of the brook, who at sunrise had dipped her feet into the bubbling runnel, to carry the green luxury to the citizens' breakfast-tables. Water-cresses are now grown like cabbages in gardens. The cry of "Rosemary and lavender" once resounded through the thoroughfares; and every alley smelt "like Bucklersbury in simple time," when

the whole street was a mart for odoriferous herbs. Cries like these are rare enough now; yet we have heard them. Crossing a bye-street a week ago we felt an unwonted fragrance in the air; and as some one has truly said that scents call up the most vivid associations, we had visions of a fair garden afar off, and the sports of childhood, and the song of the lark that

"At my window bade good morrow
Through the sweet briar."

There was a pale-looking man with little bunches in his hand, who with a feeble voice cried, "Buy my sweet-briar." There are still, however, silent damsels in the less crowded and fashionable thoroughfares who present the passengers with moss-roses and violets. Gay tells us,

"Successive cries the seasons' change declare,
And mark the monthly progress of the year.
Hark! how the streets with treble voices ring,
To sell the bounteous product of the spring."

We no longer hear the cries which had some association of harmonious sounds with fragrant flowers. They degenerated, no doubt, as our people ceased to be musical; and the din of "noiseful gain" exterminated them.

Of the street trades that are past and forgotten, the smallcoal-man was one of the most remarkable. He tells a tale of a city with few fires; for who could now imagine a man earning a living by bawling "Small coals" from door to door, without any supply but that in the sack which he carries on his shoulders? His cry was, however, a rival with that of "Wood to cleave." In a capital full of haberdashers, what chance would an aged man now have with his flattering solicitation of "Pretty pins, pretty women?" He who carries a barrel on his back, with a measure and funnel at his side, bawling "Fine writing-ink," is wanted neither by clerks nor authors. There is a grocer's shop at every turn; and who therefore needs him who salutes us with "Lilly-white vinegar?" The history of cries is a history of social changes. The working trades, as well as the venders of things that can be bought in every street, are now banished from our thoroughfares. "Old chairs to mend" still salutes us in some retired suburb; and we still see the knife-grinder's wheel; but who vociferates "Any work for John Cooper?" or "A brass pot or an iron pot to mend ?" The trades are gone to those

who pay scot and lot. What should we think of our prison discipline nowa-days, if the voice of lamentation was heard in every street, "Some broken bread and meat for the poor prisoners; for the Lord's sake pity the poor ?" John Howard put down this cry. Or what should we say of the vigilance of excise-officers if the cry of aqua vitæ met our ears? The chiropedist has now his half-guinea fee; in the old days he stood at corners, with knife and scissors in hand, crying, "Corns to pick." There are some occupations of the streets, however, which remain essentially the same, though the form be somewhat varied. The sellers of food are of course amongst these. "Hot peascods," and hot sheep'sfeet, are not popular delicacies, as in the time of Lydgate. "Hot wardens," and "Hot codlings," are not the cries which invite us to taste of stewed pears and baked apples. But we have still apples hissing over a charcoal fire; and potatoes steaming in a shining apparatus, with savoury salt-butter to put between the "fruit" when it is cut; and greasy sausages, redolent of onions and marjoram; and crisp brown flounders; and the mutton-pie-man, with his "toss for a penny." Rice-milk, furmety, barley-broth, and saloop are no longer in request. The greatest improvement of London in our own day has been the establishment of coffee-shops, where the artisan may take his breakfast with comfort, and even with luxury. It was given in evidence before the Committee on Imports last year, that there are now about eighteen hundred coffee-shops in London where the charge for a cup of coffee and a slice of bread and butter is as low as a penny; where a good breakfast may be had for threepence; where no intoxicating liquors are sold; and where the newspapers and the best periodical works may be regularly found. In one of the largest of these establishments, where the charge is three halfpence for a cup of coffee and twopence for a cup of tea, sixteen hundred persons are daily served. This is a vast improvement upon the old saloop-man, who sold his steaming mixture to the shivering mechanic as he crept to his work. It is something better for human happiness than the palmy days of the old coffee-houses. The Tatler' and 'Spectator' were the refiners of manners; and the papers which are dated from White's and the Grecian derive something perhaps from the tone of society which there prevailed. Let not those, if any there be, who hold that knowledge and taste should be luxuries for the few, curl the lip when Mr. Humphries, a coffee-shop keeper, informs them, that since he has been in business a manifest improvement has taken place in the taste for literature amongst the classes who frequent his house. But we are forgetting Morose, and his "turban of night-caps." Was Hogarth familiar with the old noise-hater when he conceived his own "Enraged Musician?" In this extraordinary gathering together of the producers of the most discordant sounds, we have a representation which may fairly match the dramatist's description of street noises. Here we have the milk-maid's scream, the mackerel-seller's shout, the sweep upon the house-top,- to match the fish-wives and orange-women, the broom-men and costard-mongers. The smith, who was "ominous," had no longer his forge in the busy streets of Hogarth's time; the armourer was obsolete but Hogarth can rival their noises with the pavior's hammer, the sowgelder's horn, and the knife-grinder's wheel. The waits of the city had a pension not to come near Morose's ward; but it was out of the power of the Enraged Musician to avert the terrible discord of the blind hautboy-player. The bellman,

who frightened the sleepers at midnight, was extinct; but modern London had acquired the dustman's bell. The bear-ward no longer came down the street with the dogs of four parishes, nor did the fencer march with a drum to his prize; but there was the ballad-singer, with her squalling child, roaring worse than bear or dog; and the drum of the little boy playing at soldiers was a more abiding nuisance than the fencer. Morose and the "Enraged Musician" had each the church-bells to fill up the measure of discord. In our own days there has been legislation for the benefit of tender ears; and there are now penalties, with police-constables to enforce them, against all persons blowing any horn or using any other noisy instrument, for the purpose of calling persons together, or of announcing any show or entertainment, or for the purpose of hawking, selling, distributing, or collecting any article, or of obtaining money or alms. These are the words of the Police Act of 1839; and they are stringent enough to have banished from our streets all those uncommon noises which did something to relieve the monotony of the one endless roar of the tread of feet and the rush of wheels. The street noise now is deafening when we are in the midst of it; but in some secluded place, such as Lincoln's Inn Gardens, it is the ever-present

sullen sound of angry waves dashing upon the shingles. The horn that proclaimed extraordinary news, running to and fro among peaceful squares and secluded courts, was sometimes a relief. The bell of the dustman was not altogether unpleasant. In the twilight hour, when the shutters were not yet closed, and the candles were not yet burning, the tinkle of the muffin-man had something in it very soothing. It is gone. But the legislators have still left us our street music. There was talk of its abolition; but they have satisfied themselves with enacting that musicians, on being warned to depart from the neighbourhood of the house of any householder by the occupier or his servant, or by a policeconstable, incur a penalty of forty shillings by refusal. De la Serre, who came to England with Mary de Medici, when she visited the Queen of Charles I., is enthusiastic in his praises of the street music of London:-" In all public places,

violins, hautboys, and other kinds of instruments are so common, for the gratification of individuals, that in every hour of the day our ears may be charmed with their sweet melody." England was then a musical nation; but from that time

nearly to our own her street-music became a thing to be legislated against. It ought now to be left alone, if it cannot be encouraged by the State.

6

In the days of Elizabeth, and of James and Charles, the people were surrounded with music, and imbued with musical associations. The cittern was heard in every barber's shop; and even up to the publication of the Tatler' it was the same: "Go into a barber's anywhere, no matter in what district, and it is ten to one you will hear the sounds either of a fiddle or guitar, or see the instruments hanging up somewhere." The barbers or their apprentices were the performers: "If idle, they pass their time in life-delighting music." Thus writes a pamphleteer of 1597. Doctor King, about the beginning of the last century, found the barbers degenerating in their accomplishments, and he assigns the cause: "Turning themselves to periwig-making, they have forgot their cittern and their music." The cittern twanged then in the barbers' shops in the fresh mornings especially; and then came forth the carman to bear his loads through the narrow thoroughfares. He also was musical. We all know how Falstaff describes Justice Shallow: "He came ever in the rear-ward of the fashion, and sung those tunes to the over-scutched housewives that he heard the carmen whistle." He had a large stock of tunes. In Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair,' one of the characters exclaims, "If he meet but a carman in the street, and I find him not loth to keep him off of him, he will whistle him and all his tunes over at night in his sleep." Half a century later even, "barbers, cobblers, and plowmen," were enumerated as "the heirs of music." Who does not perceive that when Isaac Walton's milk-maid sings,

"Come live with me and be my love,"

she is doing nothing remarkable? These charming words were the common possession of all. The people were the heirs of poetry as well as of music. They had their own delicious madrigals to sing, in which music was "married to immortal verse," and they could sing them. Morley, writing in 1597, says,